Toyota Thunder: TRD Celica GT-S

Sharper? Yes. Sharp enough? No.

With its 7800-rpm redline, 180 horsepower that peaks just 200 rpm before that, and an aggressive VVTL-i electronically variable valve-timing-and-lift scheme, the 1.8-liter DOHC 16-valve engine in Toyota's Celica GT-S is plenty edgy. Plus, it's backed by a six-speed manual transmission, and the body wrapped around that engine looks as though it were designed with a knife. But the suspension, while generating impressive performance numbers, feels more civilized than aggressive.

TRD's aim for its Sportivo suspension kit is to sharpen the chassis of Toyota's edgiest car. So the $1545 kit includes new, stiffer springs (38 percent firmer than stock up front, 30 percent stiffer in the rear), bigger anti-roll bars (24 millimeters in diameter up front, up from 22mm stock; and 21mm in diameter at the rear instead of the 17mm stock), rubber bushings 17 percent stiffer than stock, revalved shocks and struts, and upper-strut-mount reinforcements. In addition, a $136 rear strut brace has been added. On TRD's demonstrator car, the T2 wheels fitted with P215/40ZR-17 Toyo Proxes T1-S tires replace the optional 16-inch wheels and P205/50VR-16 tires offered on the stock GT-S car.

Although that constitutes a pretty thorough reconstruction of the suspension, the rest of this TRD Celica is only modestly twisted. TRD added its own $634 sport-exhaust cat-back system, a high-flow air filter within the stock filter box, and $4267 worth of spoilers, wings, valance panels, and tinted head lamps. TRD claims the improved breathing of the exhaust and intake is worth an additional 14 hp over stock, but it makes no assertions for the body bits beyond claiming that high-schoolers dig them. Add up everything except the tires on the car, and that's $6752 beyond the 2001 GT-S's $21,800 purchase price.

On the tight Streets of Willow road course, the TRD-modified Celica's turn-in is dramatically better than stock, and when the inevitable understeer arrives, it's modest. Driven at less than 10/10ths, the car feels neutral and only reminds that it's a front-driver when accelerating out of corners. Steering effort seems greater than stock, more so than might be expected for a car whose tire contact patch has expanded only 10mm at each corner.That improvement in at-limit behavior doesn't, however, mean that the limits themselves have expanded. Despite bigger tires and thicker bars, the TRD Celica only matched our last GT-S's 0.86-g skidpad orbit. Getting the most of the chassis changes on the track probably means adopting beefier rubber than this car's modest upgrade.

On the road, there's notably more noise transmitted from the tires into the cabin than stock. That's not surprising, given the harsher springs and harder bushings, and it's just irritating enough that the sound could be maddening during daily commutes. The exhaust system adds to the cacophony, and the change in air filters is, we assume, responsible for the more pronounced octave shift as the VVTL-i variable valve timing kicks in at about 6000 rpm.

But although the exhaust and the intake change the sound of the Celica, there's nothing to indicate that they make it quicker. The TRD car's 7.5-second 0-to-60-mph clocking is 0.3 second slower than the last stock machine we tested, and the TRD's quarter-mile time of 15.7 seconds at 92 mph is 2 mph slower. There's no reason TRD's changes should have made the car much faster, but they shouldn't have slowed it down. We can only guess at the reasons for this small disparity.TRD's modifications nudge the Celica GT-S toward the raw-nerve reflexes of a car like the Acura Integra Type R. But the potential is there for Toyota and its TRD division to comprehensively optimize the car as a true, factory-built near racer along the lines of the Type R. There's more power to be had from this engine, more grip to come from this chassis, and we want it all.

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